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‘No,’ he says, hands flat to his face. ‘That can’t… It can’t… She said he wasn’t mine. At first. It was me who had to ask, but she said no. It was me who…’ He suspected it. He put the idea into her head. Hegaveit to her. She left him sitting there stewing and returned with a different story, a story he took for a reluctant admission of the truth. But it wasn’t the truth. It was his own notion, his own dream reflected back at him, used against him.
He looks at Cheryl, who shakes her head, her eyebrows creasing in sorrow. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘But… I mean, are you sure?’
They nod.
‘But… don’t youmind?’
She narrows her eyes, shakes her head a fraction as if she hasn’t heard. ‘Mind what? Mind her using Tommy to lure you into marriage? Yes, I do mind. I’m beginning to suspect we won’t see Naomi again, to be honest. I suspect we’re all victims here – I’m just not sure what of.’
‘No.’ Sam raises his palms: stop. ‘Not that. I mean, don’t you mind Naomi having a son with your husband?’ And then it dawns. Of course. ‘Oh my God,’ he whispers. ‘She’s the surrogate. She’s your surrogate. That’s why she lives here. Did you keep her on for the breastfeeding?’ Though he never saw her breastfeed Tommy. Only bottles. Only ever bottles.
‘No,’ he hears Cheryl say, so softly. ‘She’s not our surrogate. She’s our live-in nanny, that’s all. Tommy’s mine and Harry’s. He’s mine and Harry’s little boy.’
‘What?’ But as he looks from one to the other, he sees that they are telling the truth, and that this too is a truth he has known, for how long he is not sure. From the moment they walked in? Or before that, when he used another man’s shower gel? The spare room is Naomi’s. Of course. That’s why her books are there, the bathrobe that smells of her. When he explained, he didn’t even mention that Naomi had claimed to be Tommy’s mother, because it had never occurred to him that she was not.
Harry and Cheryl’s hands are clasped tight. The look of shock on their faces is, he suspects, a mirror of his own.
‘I’m going to check on Toms.’ Harry lets go of his wife’s hand and runs upstairs. A moment later, he returns and nods to her. ‘He’s fine. Asleep.’
Sam wants to say,Of course he’s fine. I’m his father, for God’s sake. But finds he cannot speak. Upstairs, his beautiful baby boy sleeps, a child so much part of him he no longer feels whole without him. A child he will never see again after this night. A child not his, never his.
‘Are you OK?’ It is Cheryl. ‘Do you want a glass of water?’ She rummages in her bag, hands him a tissue. ‘Do you need anything? You look like you’re going to be sick.’
Sam shakes his head. ‘I’m fine,’ he manages. ‘I’m…’
‘Naomi came to us in January,’ Harry says after a moment – calm now, almost conversational. ‘We’d advertised for a live-in nanny because we both work long, sometimes unpredictable hours and need flexibility. Plus, we didn’t want Thomas going to a nursery because of the whole pandemic thing. Naomi had a great CV, a lovely way about her, not to mention a driving licence. We were looking for someone independent, who could basically see to Tommy’s needs, look after the house and generally be a third pair of hands. Someone who could hold the fort, you know? Who wouldn’t be waiting for us to get in so she could dash off. Naomi said she was looking for a private arrangement because the nurseries were closed.’
‘She never worked in a nursery,’ Sam says. ‘She was a doctor’s receptionist.’
‘Right.’ Harry’s eyebrows rise and fall. ‘Right.’ He exhales heavily, scratches his head. After a moment, and with apparent effort, he presses on. ‘She said she was keen to live in because her partner had recently walked out on her and she was finding it lonely by herself. She…’ He throws a questioning glance to his wife. ‘Did she rent out her place?’
Cheryl nods.
‘So shedidn’tsell her flat?’ Sam asks.
Cheryl shakes her head. ‘I think her sister rents a room off her. I could be wrong. Anyway, when she told me she’d hooked up with her ex, she said she was saving hard for a house. She encouraged us to go out, said she’d babysit whenever, we could just pop an extra tenner in her wages. She even took Tommy out on a Saturday morning sometimes to give us a lie-in.’
She came to him. She came to wish him happy birthday.
‘When I came here,’ he says, ‘you were here. You were here that night. I thoughtyouwere the babysitter, but…’
‘I get why you would think that. Why would you think anything else? She didn’t go out much, did she?’ She looks at Harry, who shakes his head. ‘When we went out, I paid her a bit more obviously, but if you’re saying you came here in the evening a few times, well, it probably wasn’t about extra money, was it? She was getting us out of the way to make you think this was her house.’
‘But I always had to leave by ten. She said it was because she had to be up early with the baby. I was so impressed with her dedication. It was unlike her. I thought she’d turned over a new leaf. I was so taken with Tommy, I was so wrapped up in…’
He makes himself breathe. When he thinks he can continue, he adds, ‘I didn’t want to lose him. I just did what I was told. I didn’t want to scare her away. I wanted her to trust me.’
‘You poor lamb.’ Cheryl sighs.
He shakes his head. ‘We only met again in April and then Joyce… my gran… it’s all been so up and down. Whenever she came to mine, she said she’d taken time off, but she always left around five, five thirty.’
‘To get back here before us,’ Harry fills in. ‘We tend to get home around seven.’
‘I thought she was taking time off, but… she was doing her job, there, at my place. Joyce and me, we were helping her do her job. On Wednesdays we were… we were giving her a day off.’
A shocked silence falls.
